Promise:
A Closer Look

At first consideration, a promise is making a bond between myself and someone else. Giving my word that something will or will not happen, that I will follow through. That I will keep a confidence shared. I will uphold my end of an agreement or arrangement. A handshake. A written note of confidence.

On second consideration, the word promise points to hope, that anything can happen, anything is possible. To show great ability. To do amazing, wonderful, beautiful things.

Why consider promise?

Well, making a promise means I will do what I said I would do for someone else. Period.

This action of making a promise came under scrutiny this week when I began looking closer at the words in a new journal I’ve been working my way through. I’m currently in Week 3.

Yes, I’ll share the journal below!

There are four quadrants to fill in at the start of each morning; the first two are about feeling…current feeling and desired feeling.

Promise became an issue at quadrant three, where the journal prompts me to write “One promise I will keep to myself.”

The first nine days I’d fill in something from my to-do list or something random I thought I’d like to do.

But then, as I gave that sentence more attention, considered it thoughtfully…what is the one promise I can make to myself today and keep it…I found it incredibly difficult to fill out and complete by the end of the day.

Then there’s quadrant four: “One thing I want to get done today.”

I have tons of to-dos that need completed, started, acted upon…so why is it difficult to pick just one and complete it each day?

Make one promise to myself. Complete one task.

Hmmmmm…I thought, as I sat and stared at the two blank spots in the journal where I could not find anything to promise to myself or that I’d like to complete.

Why is this?

It’s odd, because I have no trouble hopping to it when I need to do something for someone else, to help a family member, friend, or colleague with something.

Why can’t I make one simple promise to myself
to choose to do a particular thing and then do it?

Does this resonate?!

This inquiry has come at a perfect time because I’ve realized that making a promise to myself means making a commitment and sticking to it.

And the hard truth that’s been uncovered…I generally don’t like making commitments. And it typically hinges around time. How do I know I’ll want to do the thing when the time comes? How much time will it take? Will it be a good time?!

This is where having the curiosity and capacity to explore the words ~ promise and commitment ~ is useful. When we make promises to ourselves that we also keep, routinely…we find we have the ability to make wonderful things that offer beauty, grace, peace, magic, love to the world around us. Whether it be a work of art, a writing, a meal, or coffee with a friend…

There is a world of promise in the promises we keep to ourselves.

Self-Guided Workshop:
A Promise to Self

You may like to have…

• Pens

• Paper

• Paints

• Pencils

• Pastels

• Passion

• Promise

• Patience

• and so on…!

Inquiry & Journaling

Consider the dreams you have. Not only the day dreams, but the really big ones connected to an internal, deeper desire. Free write for as long as you like. No editing or judging, just writing.

• What do I want to accomplish by the end of the year?

• How do I want to show up, move through each day for my family (and myself)?

• What do I deeply long for right now?

• What clothing do I see myself wearing?

• What car do I want to drive everyday?

• What house do I want to wake up and fall asleep in?

• What trips do I want to take.

• What do I want to create…for myself…to share with the world?

Next, from this place of Visionary…Write this inquiry at the top of a blank sheet of paper:

What is the one promise I make with myself that is my new starting point each day?

Then, write your promise…Make the answer to this question simple. Let it be wild, unbound, free. Don’t write with a fear that someone else will read your words. Write the answer that comes from somewhere deep inside.

Once you have your promise, sit quietly for a few moments. Breathe gently…slowly in, slowly out. Hold visions of what you’ve journaled lightly in your mind.

What can you feel? How does this promise you’ve made sit with you, and where is it living within you? Does it feel right, aligned?

If yes…perhaps you’d like to continue by making a collage, journaling, painting, or drawing on the page where your promise now lives.

If no…continue to sit quietly and see what else bubbles up. Again, no censoring yourself or judging what comes or does not come.

I sat with this challenge for a few days. Maybe it’s the same for you. No matter the outcome…an answer, a promise will come all in good time. It’s the initial consideration that begins the process of making promises that you will keep for yourself…because you are worthy of the same care and consideration you offer everyone else.

Final thoughts…

The journal I’ve been working with is the Morning Routine Journal by Wilde House Paper.

I saw this brand on Instagram ages ago and marveled at how gorgeous the products were. Then, as luck would have it (ohhh the timing of the Universe 😉), my daughter and I were browsing in our favorite local gift shop and there it was…a whole display of Wilde House Paper journals (I bought two others, too - The Reset Guide and Pieces of You!).

Browse all of their stunning products…

Wilde House Paper

Yay! He’s here!!

Now that it’s Virgo Season, you might notice underlying themes of gathering, harvest, and solitude. You may even notice, from the self-guided practice above, that your answers to what you desire and the promise you choose to make to yourself came from some illuminated place inside!

Well, here we are…The Tarot card of the season is The Hermit…Old and Wise and True.

As a Virgo, this dear fellow is assigned as my card. I always find him to be loving, quiet, guiding, and encouraging me to explore my path with curiosity and insight for what can be witnessed, learned, or cultivated.

Have a look…What do you notice about him? What message does the Hermit bring to you?

And exciting news…
The Hermit is the earthy, grounding foundation card for our September gathering!

We hope you’ll join us!

Thursday, September 17th
12:30 - 1:45pm EST (NYC)
5:30 - 6:45pm GMT (London)

A Monthly Tarot Club ~ The Draw

Live on Zoom!

USA Register Here 🕯️ $19

UK Register Here ✨ GBP

A sanctuary where…

• anything is possible

• exploration is a practice

• connections are cultivated (with fellow seekers and ancient, collective symbols!)

• quietly settling in to the body and the space you are in and opening your eyes and mind to look, to see your challenge and your desire…the promise that lies just beyond a third door becomes accessible

• live, together, we expand our vision and thinking, we encourage and support, we find new ways of claiming our promise and being who we were truly meant to be

We can’t wait to see you there…
The star in your lantern will burn brighter by the end of our journey together!

Registration includes:

• Live Zoom gathering

• Replay access

• All slides and cards worked with during the session

• Additional home journaling and creativity practices

• Surprise bonus handouts!

• A portal where all of these goodies live, as well as access to us for follow up questions, thoughts, and the sharing of your creative works with your fellow participants, post-gathering!

USA Register Here 🕯️ $19

UK Register Here ✨ GBP

A version of this article was published
on Medium August 24, 2021.

A Mother’s thoughts…
Back to another beginning

Driving home alone yesterday, for the first time in 10 weeks, I thought to myself,

I miss my little lady so much I can feel the burn, the sting of aloneness that has haunted me for a lifetime…perhaps for lifetimes.

I miss all of the questions, the silly faces, the endless snack-getting.

I miss watching her, through my new goggles, swimming underwater.

Like a fish through glass,
like the sun and the moon in clear skies,
her light from within shining bright
as only love knows how to do.

Back to Self

Who am I when I’m alone, at my core, with the sad heaviness setting in?

I’ve known this self many times before.

How can I smile…knowing her smile is not with me?

Back to Self

How can I move forward…knowing I am sinking and lost, and at the same time knowing…

• it is possible for me to create and bring forth the world from within me

• I can create the world I want for her, for me, for us

• it is possible, because she is proof that I am a creator of great works and worlds…because she is the greatest of my creations…she was the world within me at one time, too.

How can I exist apart from a blur when I feel too tired, too confused, too scattered, too stuck in lifetimes of fear that I’ve become too afraid to try?

Back to Self

What a rich and powerful opportunity this fall, this back-to-school season, offers…

Beginning to know the Self again…creating and cultivating the sensations, emotions, and conversations, the life I desire to bring forth from the depths of my being.

Back to Self

Right now my mini is having her own beautiful day…So why don’t I have one, too?!

Back to Self

Breathe. Smile.

Invite the Self to arrive in Peace. In Joy…

…to build the life of her own choosing.

…to build the life of my own choosing.

It is ok. It is all ok.

Life is perfect in this moment and in all the moments that follow.

Breathe. Smile. Return to experience, renew, reinvent your singular, beautiful, magical Self.

Back to School ~
Back to Self

Subscribe now

Present day…

This morning, as I drove home from morning drop-off (alone again 5 years later!), I pressed resume on a goop Podcast1 where Gwyneth Paltrow discusses life now that both of her children have moved out of the house.

She realizes, unlike her friends with children still in K-12, she no longer has a calendar filled with school activities and vacations, no more sports activities and spring breaks…and I felt that same pit in my stomach, that same burn, the sting of aloneness that has haunted me for a lifetime…perhaps for lifetimes.

However, this is funny…I started listening to this podcast when it first came out on March 18, 2025!! 🤦🏼‍♀️ Yes! It has taken me that long to return to it!!

Which leads me to a theory…

A mother’s time is not her own.

A mother’s time is the time of the child, the family, the outer demands of the world she and her beloveds walk through for 18 years (and hopefully more…).

But each fall and every New Year, this mother gets to return, back to self…back to the inkling, the idea, the spark of hope that the next world, the next creation that wants to be birthed from her, will arrive one day in the not too distant future.

Because time moves too quickly and present time is not her own, the leaving of the child, the “what happens next?” is truly not that far away. And if that new world is not birthed into creation, the pain of the child leaving will be too great, too difficult…too huge a gap to fill with busy-ness, and numbing, and scrolling.

And quite frankly, the world is craving
your next creation, craving to receive
the loving power you and
only you are capable of expressing.

This is why I work and write and create…

This is why…Creation is crucial for the Mother.

For without the ability to create, the mother will dissolve into time. She will fail to reconnect with Self. She will lack the ability to breathe, move, look at the future of a life worth living without the schedules, the carlines, the drop-offs and pick-ups…

I feel that. It hurts. Do you, too?

Five years ago I wrote the original piece of this article, when my daughter was eight. Today, five years later, she is 13. Five years from now, she will be 18 and perhaps moving out, starting college, or dancing to her heart’s content somewhere in the world. And I, again, will find myself alone, without my perfect little creation filling my days and nights with her sweetness and stories and schedules and needs.

Do you share a similar timeline? A timeline where you will soon find yourself wandering the cliffs and shores of life with your purpose snatched away, as though Father Time has ripped out your lungs and left you to gasp for air, grasp for that purpose and meaning that was embedded deep, deep into every part of your body…and is now g o n e?

Join me, my dear

Let’s Create together…writing, painting, drawing, cooking, building, developing, birthing the next perfect creation that was meant to come through you, the next creation that needs you to return to yourself so you can seize your next purpose, the one that will give you a renewed sense of meaning every day and night through the next season of your life.

Comment below or send me an email…

Let’s come together and create kingdoms and worlds of beauty, meaning, and purpose…not alone but as a collective! Through…

• tarot explorations

• gentle yoga practices

• meditation & breath practices

• journaling & writing guilds

• art making

I’m here. I’m ready. And so are you!

xx, Michelle
click here to send me an email!

Can you see it, feel it? The bright, hot Sun. It can be both seen and felt. It can feel intense and likely has felt this way over the last two months. It can also feel warm, soft, and radiant, which is the direction we are heading over the next few months, into the season of fall.

Yet here we are, still in summer days…even as each day grows shorter and each night longer, the Sun continues to heat our skin and allows us glorious moments of radiance when we step outside into the rays of light.

Like the Sun in its roaring heat…

The vision of Strength offers us the life-giving gift of light and sight, focus and growth. The gift of a capable, courageous, compassionate Self during Leo Season and all year long.

The Lady and The Lion

Perhaps under the white gown, the lady herself is the Lioness. Her gentle hands upon this glorious beast merely reflect herself tending to her roaring needs inside. Claiming her deep desires, she stands gracefully and bows to the infinite potential that is already within reach.

Inquiry

What are you releasing? What has come to its end of usefulness (or uselessness) that you can surrender into the longer nights that are here to support your new BECOMING?

What are you claiming? What desires continue to tug at your heart, asking you to consider, create, cultivate with the talent and charm only you possess?

A Practice in Looking:
Fine Tuning Your Awareness

What do you see in the Strength card?

VIII

Yellow, clear background.
Infinity Symbol, at a diagonal.
Crown of greens and berries. Blond hair.
Eyes closed. Face serene, relaxed.
Skin fair.
White gown.
Garland wrapped at waist, around back, dangling from left side.
Left hand on Lion’s nose.
Lion licking, tongue out.
Right hand holding Lion’s chin.
Curly mane.
Body arched, claws out, tail tucked.
Mountain, blue in the background.
Lush trees, greens of the earth.
Gown appears as a waterfall behind Lion.

Strength.

Qualities

Strength (but of course!)
Compassion
Fierce
Power V. Force
Infinite potential, possibly
Stroking genius
Love, lovely, loving holds more power than force, manipulation, greed
White, a gown of peace, purity
Garland embraces, encircles, entwines

Entwined in the power of graciousness
Skirt flowing, sky glowing
Hands tender, Lion surrender
Flowing with the golden glory of life

Dualities…Polarities

Fierce…Gentle
Fear…Surrender
Limited…Unlimited
Flowing…Stifled
Light…Dark
Giant…Lowly
Compassion…Force

Self-Guided Reflection

• Where is compassion lacking in your life?

• How can you be gracious, tender with the challenges you are currently facing?

• What idea, residing in the depths of your unconscious, requires illumination?

• How are you strong? What are your unique strengths?

A Poem for STRENGTH

Draped in the essence of compassionate vitality
Open is my heart
My hands caress the jaws of the beast
Ever knowing, an infinitesimal abundant glowing
I surrender to the might beating at my core
Wisdom that is mine and not mine, me and not me
The Lion bows, seeing herself reflected between the eyes
Window of my Soul
I am she, she is me
We are one, infinitely

In closing…
Back to School &
Monthly Tarot Club Invite

We headed back to school this week in Central Florida!

This time of year is always bittersweet. The long, fluid, slower days of summer yield to the demands of outside structures and schedules.

So, it feels timely to explore the Strength card here, as the Sun still burns brightly behind our Lady and the Lion…all three encouraging us to look deeply, tend gently, and strengthen our awareness so we know what to do next…how to apply our gifts and talents to make the most of another school year, another fall, another transition from Leo to Virgo…all of which is out of our control.

What’s in our realm of control?

Look to the Lady and the Lion to find your unique Strength…and from here, you will know what lies within your control!

xo Michelle

To Explore the Tarot and Your Personal Challenges…
To Uncover your STRENGTHS
Join Us!

The Draw
with Dee & Michelle

Thursday, August 20th
12:30pm EST (NYC)
5:30 GMT (London)

Live on Zoom!

USA Register Here 🕯️ $19

UK Register Here ✨ GBP

Tarot Club
The Draw
A Monthly Gathering

What if…

Tarot wasn’t about predicting the future, but about deepening your relationship with yourself?

Our work is informed by Jungian psychology where symbols are understood as living expressions of the unconscious and images become gateways to inner dialogue through active imagination.

Rather than seeking fixed meanings, we cultivate curiosity, allowing the cards to reveal new perspectives, invite personal insight, and cultivate boundless creative potential.

Creative Alchemy…

Each session weaves together symbolic exploration with gentle yoga, somatic movement, intentional observation, reflective journaling, creative art practices, meditation, and group discussion, allowing the images to come alive through both the seen and unseen, through the body and the unconscious mind…each of us learning something new, seeing something differently, through the eyes of others.

Over time, you’ll develop confidence in working with symbols, asking meaningful questions, finding interesting solutions to personal challenges, and budling your own symbolic language and relationship with the cards.

No previous experience with tarot is needed, only a willingness to be curious and present.

Engaged with Spirit
in silence, stillness
look…
into the evening waters below
feel the shiver, heat from a fire
senses alive…what do you know?

This episode originally aired in February 2024.

Welcome to The Elk Mountain Well Podcast - Episode #25

Hello and thanks so much for being here today!

This episode feels potent and essential to send to you today, as our good and beautiful work in this world becomes more and more critical.

Learning to look with all of our senses, honing our sight, sound, smell, touch and taste…

Connecting to and working with our entire being in an embodied way, allows us to harness our creative power.

During this meditation you will…

• acknowledge your day is filled with distraction, noise, business

• quiet your worlds…the world on the inside and the world on the outside

• gently scan the body for tension, tightness…and the messages your body wishes to share with you right now

• connect to silence and stillness…in your body and the environment in which you find yourself practicing, moving throughout your day

• consider how your senses, through symbol and internal systems, can receive information, messages, instructions…and how you can only attune to this information when you’ve cultivated your practice of being silent and still, even if it’s for one moment, one round of breath

• listen to the systems in your body…heart, lungs, muscles, for the messages they offer you in this moment

• breathe fully, with awareness…opening to the sensations felt in your chest and heart-space, back, tummy, arms, legs, head

• make notes…write down the messages received and the actions that must follow

Grab pen and paper (or laptop, iPhone, or iPad)…

Place yourself in a quiet, safe, still space for the next 16 minutes as you…

…pause in silence and stillness to listen to the wisdom that can be found on the inside and outside of your body…unique messages offered to you alone from Spirit.

Take good care and invite yourself into the gift of silence and stillness in order to know what you need, want, and desire!

Look deeply, my dear…I dare you!

xoxo Michelle

This meditation follows the article,
How to Find Meaning in “Looking,”
which is shared below.

Subscribe now

So much new & brewing!

The Draw

A Monthly Tarot Club gathering

This monthly, 75-minute group gathering explores how tarot and other symbolic imagery can become tools for self-inquiry, embodied awareness, imagination, and taking action in one’s life.

The Draw - Details Here

This work is informed by Jungian psychology where symbols are understood as living expressions of the unconscious and images become gateways to inner dialogue through active imagination.

Rather than seeking fixed meanings, we cultivate curiosity, allowing the cards to reveal new perspectives, invite personal insight, and cultivate boundless creative potential.

1:1 Sessions

Delve deeper into the mystery of you.

Bring your challenges, your inquiries into this personalized session where we work with gentle yoga and breath practices paired with the symbology and synchronicity of the tarot to unlock the wisdom and answers that already exist within you.

Learn More & Book Here

What do you do when you wonder, worry, wish…?!

Do you leave it at that and…

• wonder some more?

• worry all day and night?

• wish upon a starry, bright sky?

Wonder…

Contemplating life’s big mysteries or the mysterious “How” of all the things that have or haven’t materialized in your life yet.

Worry…

Coming in so many forms…anxiety, overwhelm, fear, sadness, abandonment, grief…in a cycle that repeats from form to form to form, keeping you awake, afraid, hidden.

Wish…

The goals, hopes, needs, wants, and desires yet to be met, secured, realized, found.

While your wondering, worrying, or wishing may take on some form of divine or yogic surrender (a key ingredient in trusting in the Divine to help materialize needs, wants, and desires), the words themselves suggest human modes of inaction.

Mindset is critical for finding peace and gaining what you want out of life, this is known. But when the mind gets trapped in the negative states or shadow sides of wondering, worrying, or wishing, your action is needed to shift your mind, body and spirit into claiming all you want, and all that wants you.

An ACTION PLAN for your
wondering, worrying, & wishing!

Step ONE: Sensation

With body quieted, softened through gentle breath and movement of limbs…creating an expansion in the chest, the heart center, and in the mind and core…

Notice what comes up or forward…
emotion, physical sensation in the body,
an inquiry.

The inquiry is key…this is the question that drives the wondering, worrying, and wishing and is what allows you to move into the following steps, claiming what you need, want, desire, and surrendering the “how” or the process of receiving or achieving that which you wonder or worry about and wish for.

✒️ Write your inquiry on a blank sheet of paper.

Step TWO: Symbol

Shift into what can be seen…work with the images, the system of Tarot as…

• problem solver

• solution maker

• way finder

• light shiner

• intuition unlocker

• creation inspiration

Work with any card layout you like. Choose a single card. Try the layout featured in this video. The options are endless!

🦋 Randomly shuffle or pick your cards and place them in the order of your desired layout. You may even like to work with artwork or old photographs…anything that will allow you to bypass the wondering, worrying, wishing brain and access what’s kept quiet, deep inside…your unconscious.

Step THREE: Journal

💫 Write all the words that come to mind associated with each image. Doodle. Make connections among and between the cards.

No judgement, just write until the words finish flowing.

Step FOUR: Join Our Monthly Club!

The Draw with Dee & me, Michelle…where we gather together as a Collective…settling, inquiring, connecting to sensation and symbol, writing and sharing.

Our next gathering takes place on…

Thursday, July 30th
12:30-1:45pm EST (NYC)
5:30-6:45pm GMT (London)

USA Register Here 🕯️ $19

UK Register Here ✨ GBP

BONUS Step:
Daily Draw v. Weekly Spread

Consider drawing one card a day or, on a specific day of the week, pull seven cards - one for each day of the coming week. (Dee prefers to draw one card a day. I prefer to draw all cards, one for each day of the week ahead, on Sunday.)

Then follow the same steps outlined above.

Have your question, your inquiry that will soften the worry and move you into claiming your desires and taking action towards them daily.

Pull the card(s).

Write. Write. Write.

And, as always, feel free to reach out to either of us if you want to book a 1:1 session or join our monthly gathering! You’ll love it, we promise!

See the subtle, the Divine messages for you
sort out all your
wonderings, worries, and wishes
through softening, images and symbols,
moving the energy that wants to come to you, through you.

Find your way out of the inaction of
wondering, worrying, and wishing.

Join us for our next

Tarot Club
Monthly Gathering

Coming up this month…

We explore three cards as they connect
to the virtue, image, and polarities of Temperance…

fire & water
giving & receiving
grounded & floating
chaos & calm
worrying & acting

The Draw
with Dee & Michelle

Thursday, July 30, 2026
12:30 - 1:45pm EST (NYC)
5:30 - 6:45pm GMT (London)

USA Register Here 🕯️ $19

UK Register Here ✨ GBP

Summer is well underway and it’s also official, having crossed the Summer Solstice threshold four days ago. To celebrate the Solstice, I found an incredible piece of Sandstone, pictured below, that looks like a flame…

This beautiful piece also correlates with The Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. I’m well into book five now, The Empire of Storms and will share no more than to say…

If you’d like to join a book club exclusively on this series, The Throne of Glass, comment below! I’m considering the syllabus as you read!

At the Shore…

What follows are some of my of-the-moment favorite things being enjoyed, devoured, worn, savored…all things that are sweetening my summer, as I hope they might sweeten yours!

🏖️ Summertime Obsessions

The Shore & Suntans
Physical Mail
Stunning, Storybook Jewelry
✨ The Draw 🂽 Monthly Tarot Gathering ✨
The Starling Club Membership
Beauty, Beauty, Beauty

Mail Clubs 💌

Magazines and Mail Clubs…so right up my alley!

I’ve loved magazines from just about the day I was born. And now that my digital detoxing is in full effect this summer, and as the shift of this newsletter moves into a more visually inspiring and interactive magazine-of-sorts where you and I connect on a different level…

Mail Clubs are another way I’ve found deep connection to fellow creative mothers, and the beauty they share is accessible and absolutely delightful (think: physical, hold in your hand Instagram).

Two Current Subscriptions

The Collectors Club Post from Emily Jeffords Studio …
On Substack |

The Lottura Post …
On Substack |

The Paris Market
& Fallen Aristocrat

Fallen Aristocrat. Close your eyes and say the words to yourself…Isn’t the name just glorious!

Fallen Aristocrat is hands-down my favorite jewelry line, from my favorite shop, The Paris Market on Broughton Street in the Historic District of Savannah, Georgia.

The images above show the keepsake bracelet my daughter created and the seashell and Mother Mary charms I selected to add on to the necklace that was a Christmas gift. (We both picked the same shell charm…Hello, dear Mary Magdalen!)

The shop covers two floors of a historic building, and you can just feel the pure, radiating magic as soon as you cross the threshold of the front doors.

Antiques from France. Perfumes. Scarves. Jewels. Art. Books. Art books. Papers & Stationary. Home goods. Sweet toys for children. Shells. Just loads and loads of beauty-galore!

Then there’s the Cafe! Coffee. Sweets. Ice cream. AMAZING!!

If you ever find yourself in Savannah, this spot is a must! Have a peek at the website through the button just below, where you can even purchase your own Fallen Aristocrat jewels, and follow the shop and jewelry line on Instagram.

Of special note…Their seasonal windows rival those on 5th Avenue in NYC, IMO!! 😉

The Paris Market

The Starling Club 🕊️

An American Living in Paris, Jamie Beck, captured my attention and dreams of living in Europe about six or seven years ago, when I learned of her work through The Paris Market.

’s community on Discord, The Starling Club, has been the best place for work and lifestyle inspiration, worldly education, is a soothing and joyful retreat for beauty in all forms, and so much more. In the Club, we have access to…

• stunning photography of flowers and art created by fellow members

• monthly / quarterly art, writing, poetry challenges in which we all get to participate

• vacation field guides (France, Italy, Morocco…)

• book clubs & movie and tv show live watch parties

• the list goes on and on

Now here’s the URGENCY!! The reason I’m sharing this now (and would feel terrible if I didn’t let you in on this Club goodness) is because Jamie is closing the doors to founding members on June 30th - in 5 days! The founding & forever annual membership price of $100 will not return, and new memberships will be on pause for an unknown amount of time.

This might just be the best $100 you’ll spend all year! The button below takes you directly to the registration page. 1

The Starling Club

Join The Draw
Thursday, July 30th

What’s pressing, hovering inside your mind, your heart this summer? What’s grasping at you…asking you to remember, explore, engage?

Every month, and I meet with fellow participants in our live Zoom Sanctuary to journey into our dreams, desires, curiosities, conundrums through light breathing exercises and seated movements, tarot cards, and writing exercises that allow us to gain wisdom, learn from each other, and connect with the Divine Spirit that’s seeking us, just as we are seeing Her.

Want to know more, hit reply and let’s chat!

The Draw
Thursday, July 30th
12:30pm EST (NYC) | 5:30pm GMT (London)

Ready to register?! Here’s your link!

Register Now! 🌞 $19

And just like one of our attendees on our call earlier this week exclaimed when she saw the third card we were working with…

”WOW! I REALLY NEEDED TO BE HERE TODAY!
This card was meant for me!!!”

The cards just might be calling to you, too!

If you’re in the UK, click here to register through Dee’s UK link!

xoxo M

P.S. Mothers of kiddos…Did you spot the subtle, trendy phrase that would have your young ones tossing their hands about?! 😂 Could not resist!!

VOL. ONE. ISSUE 1 :: The Inaugural Edition
June 2026 | Intentional, Immersive, Interactive, Inspirational

At the Shore

THE EDITORIAL & WELCOME

Welcome to the Inaugural Edition!

Can you see it?
🌞 The full sun on the horizon?

Can you hear it?
🧜🏼‍♀️ Waves. Seagulls. The hum of Madame Sea.

Can you touch it?
🐚 Sand. Water. Seashells.

Can you smell it, taste it?
🌊 Salty air. Salty surf.

The Shore offers herself, her joys and pains, her rapture and restoration. Always, without ceasing.

Similar to motherhood…

As a mother, you offer your time and treasures, your love and life. Chapter upon chapter, page after page, you give in the service of your family. And just like the Shore, no matter how devoted or depleted you become, the salty waves of selfless service restore you again, again, again.

There is nothing that brings me more joy than being a mother. But as my daughter gets older, wiser, more independent, I find my role as mother shifts, perhaps even shrinks…but only in some ways, because it also expands…just like the Sea.

Sand, always shifting with the waves.
Sand as moments, experiences, exchanges.
Waves as space and time.

To say I’m thrilled we have crossed the threshold of school-year to shore-line is an understatement! This second year of middle school has been brutal and beautiful, just like all the years that have come before it, and as the ones yet to come. Different, and the same.

Motherhood, just like the Shore…always the same, yet always different.

Rest easy, dear reader! Allow yourself to bask in the rapture and restoration of Summer!

The Shoreline Awaits!

Enjoy!

xoxo M

The Symbol

Shore & Sea | Beach & Body

Archetypes of…Sun, Child, Home, Freedom

Sunrise | Sunset
The Summer Child
Coming Home to Self
Joy, Expansion of Childhood
The Freedom of long days, long nights

Vignettes of Summer

Snapshots | Joy, Connection, Expression, Lightness, Freedom, Expansion

As the waves crest and hit, crest and hit, I hear the receptive cadence of the ocean, Mother Sea, as she beckons me…

“Come my child, first your toes, your feet, your ankles, your knees.
Come my child, allow me to hold you, buoyant and free.
Come my child, breathe in my salty sweetness, dive into my clear, murky caress…
only you and only me, the sea.”

🌊

The school bell rings. Cheers, squeals, hollering in the hallways tell the world, the children are out, the children are free. No more hard rules. No more desks or rules telling them to press pause on who they really are. No more quizzes and tests. At least for the next 10 weeks, they are free. Birds who can soar into the morning and night with equal measure of joy, connection, freedom of expansion and expression. Free to be themselves with family and friends.

Who were we when we were them, these free-bird-children? Yes, that was once you and me, we were joyful, connected, free with our imaginations and laughter and expression.

Who says we cannot match this joyful, child-like freedom right now, today?

No one, my dear, but the caged-child of yesterday…the one who no longer exists!

THE ESSENCE

Nourishment + Home

Sound + Mood

For the nostalgia of it all…

This song is one that brings back memories of my parents, sister, and me driving home, parking in the garage, volume turned up…waiting, listening, loving the harmony.

And today, it still reaches my core.
Feeling very “threshold” at the Shore.

See if you remember this one!!!
Listen here!

THE VISION

Essay of image, where beauty teaches…without words.

THE ORACLE

Depth + Emotional Resonance

Take your time here.

Consider each image. The tiny pieces, symbols that call out to you from the whole, from the collective.

🌞

Image Set: ONE

Embodied Inquiry…

• What do you notice first?

• Which image speaks to you the most, calls in the loudest voice?

• What patterns, similarities, mirrors do you recognize across the three images?

• What do you feel? Can you feel the water pooling around your feet?

Can you feel the waters of your unconscious dancing, spooling, telling you in a whisper…

“Feel, my darling. Taste. Enjoy. Gaze at the Moon. Return to the innocence of childhood and relive your most vivid, wild, joyful experience of summer, the shore, the sea, the salt, the storms. Walk with me, my child. Blend, balance, breathe. Shoot across the sky as the blazing, blissful Star you are, today, tonight, always. I love you!”

🌞

Image Set: TWO

Storytelling…

Take in each image, individually then collectively.

• What meaning do you make of each one…separately?…together?

• What story forms when you consider each part as a whole?

  • Write it down.

  • Create a collage.

  • Bring your children close to observe and write the story together…of summer, of the threshold you experience today, in this very moment.

“Basking in the moonlight, tide ebbing and flowing, the Siren sings her soothing song to all who embrace her subtle voice. Her hum echos in the waves, stirring all hearts, all souls, all beings. With a splash of her tail, she leaps over the threshold of ocean wave and starlight night…dancing in the dreams of the divine.”

THE PRACTICE

Invitation + Embodied Experience

For your practice…

Find yourself…in a safe, quiet, and still environment for this 3.30 minute guided meditation.

🌊 While listening in silence is always a welcome break from the daily noise that surrounds us, it may also be nice to play your favorite sounds from the sea in the background.

🐚 You may like to have something to write with and on for some free-writing or journaling after this practice (prompts provided below!). You never know what will come up during and after your practice!

THE RITUAL

Ceremony + Anchored Intention

One gentle ritual for you this month.
For anytime, anywhere.

Breathe ~
Close or soften your eyes.
Place your hands on lap or heart.
Gently breathe in…
Gently, fully breathe out…
Again. Again. Again.
Now, in this moment, is the time to slow,
…a time for subtle awareness, gratitude.

Simply, with intention…just breathe…

THE JOURNAL

Reflection + Integration

As I walk along the shoreline, each footstep placed with intention on the sand where the water comes to greet me, to meet me…

• Where am I being called to connect more deeply?

On a sunny day, I hear the call of ocean birds, the taste of salty sea on my lips, I feel a gentle breeze blowing through my hair.

• What brings me genuine peace, radiance, joy—and how can I share this with each of my loved ones?

The day is gray. Storm clouds move swiftly overhead. Lightening and thunder crack in the distance, and I know they are coming closer and closer towards me. These days are as sure to arrive, just as the sun and the moon are sure to find me every morning and every night.

• How do I gracefully meet challenges and move through them with strength and agility when they appear?

The ocean waves approach and retreat. I do the same when I create, dance, share my love…I approach and retreat, because I can, because it is in my nature, because I am free to come and go as I please…because I am a Child of God who moves in the rhythm of Divine nature.

• What does freedom feel like in my life right now? How do I experience this freedom in my body, in my daily schedule, in my work?

• How do I become my most Sovereign self, free to choose, free to say “yes” and “no” as it suits me?

THE CLOSING

Completion + LOVE

A Blessing for you, dear reader…

May you be filled with love and longing…for the simple, serene, soulful essence that is the beginning of summer.

The Solstice gifts you, on Sunday, June 21st, with your longest day of the year. And on this day may you feel the burning desire to bask in the sunlight a little longer, savoring the sweetness of the true threshold of summer.

May you touch the sand and swirl your delicate, graceful fingers round and round in the sea.

May you know that you are a divine creation, pure love made free.

Like the waves reaching the shoreline under a moonlit sky, beckoning us to cross into our radiant, divine light…

🌞🕯️✨

We walk this path together,
one breath at a time.

With love always,

The Market

Offerings + Favorites

~ The Draw ~

Dee and I host our next monthly gathering where we fuse breath, gentle seated movement, tarot, and being alive in the present, creative moment, Tuesday, June 23rd at 12:30pm EST (NYC) | 5:30pm GMT (London).

We’d love for you to…

• come, look, see

• explore the depths that lie dormant within

• touch the threshold of your shore

• inquire about your current life

• cultivate plans for summer

Register 🌞 $19

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

The volcano? That’s me, here, now.

Flash Back…

Mother’s Day Eve, 10:30pm

I slipped and fell down the stairs, landing on and badly scraping my left forearm (on the feminine, receiving side of the body).

I passed out twice.

My entire body trembled from the pain as I passed in and out of the here and not-here. It felt like my arm had been cracked in two. It wasn’t, but it felt like it was.

Vitals…😬

• BP: 74/48

• Pulse: 44

• Hands and feet: White as sheets

It wasn’t until 4am, while staying awake in case it was my head that took the bang and was responsible for the tremors, that I remembered Peter Levine’s book, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. In it he teaches us that the body needs to be given an opportunity to shake, to tremor through experienced traumas.

I wasn’t having seizures. My body was trembling away the trauma of the staircase crash. That felt better, correct, so I closed my eyes and rested a bit.

While laying in bed I wondered about the significance, the symbolism, the synchronicity of hurting my left side.

Shattered & Shifted

This inquiry into a deeper meaning for the slip surfaced because, while I laid in bed, I felt something in and around me shift. While my left forearm wasn’t shattered, thank God, I wondered…

Why?

Why fall, tonight of all nights, on the eve of Mother’s Day?

Why the left arm, the feminine side, was injured? The side for receiving, softness, why?

I felt an energy within me moving. Like lots of little pings, surges, swirls.

It wasn’t that I was feeling broken or no longer the soft and loving mother and wife I usually am. But rather, I began to feel a strength surfacing. An unusual fearlessness and acceptance. A shift in the way I was about to hold, move, and express myself over the course of the next four days.

Fast Forward…

Another piece to the shifting, shattering puzzle.

Today we suffered the loss of six trees. Cut down right outside our windows.

Unfortunately, we are still renters, waiting to claim our forever home (maybe in Florida, maybe somewhere else). And also unfortunately, HOA’s just love to HOA… ”Their roots are going to ruin the foundation of the homes.” “Bugs will get inside.” Ok. Whatever. The sad story was, it really wouldn’t matter. Renting or owning, the trees were coming down today. That piece was out of our control. (And I absolutely HATE when things are out of my control, especially when it comes to our home.)

It was only last night that I had learned of the pending loss of the trees.

I began to feel ill at the thought of losing

• a habitat and playground for our birds and squirrels,

• shade for a home that already gets too hot from the Florida sun, for plants that require shade in order to thrive, and

• the cozy reading nook where my daughter reads,

…all gifted to us by these six beautiful trees.

I laid there thinking to myself, “If they really cut down these trees, I’m going to scream.”

Another night, unable to sleep, I tossed and turned.

Perimenopausal heat causing covers on, covers off.

And the oddest thing, I kept feeling a cramping sensation in the area of my Womb.

Mentally placing the puzzle pieces together…adding this huge loss of Mother Nature to the already stressful time of end-of-school-year Mothering (another out of control nightmare in and of itself), and a cut and bruised body…

Myself, as Mother, cracked.

Myself, as the person I was Saturday afternoon, before the fall, to the person I now find myself morphing into…they are two different humans.

I’m feeling a shift into the
Wild Wolf, the Crone.

“I’m done,” my complacent, easy, happy, people-pleasing persona screams, as she begins to dissolve.

I’m done with the games, the rules, the sugar and sweetness. I’m done with the entities and organizations that don’t care about you or me.

I’m angry today, and I’m sharing it, and perhaps that’s a good thing.

And never before has this feeling, sensation, cracking…this shattering and shifting…felt aligned with who I’ve always thought myself to be…

Until now.

Anger, an unusual sensation

Normally my go-to, default emotion is anxiety, that brings with it its typical, standard physical sensations. Today I am not that.

Today I’m angry. It’s been over five years since I felt this similar emotion, similar physical sensations where I could either cry or scream. Similar to when these words came…

Unknown Anger

Anxiety, worry, fear
They are
Familiar foes

This anger
Pulsing through my veins
Filling my heart and throat

This anger
Blinding my eyes
Tensing my body

This anger
This unknown intruder
I know it not

Angered by
Hypocrisy
Double standards
Fear tactics
Silencing
Shaming
Hate

I have never before felt this type of anger
And while it scares me, it
Thrills me in equal measure

To be fueled by
Heat
Passion
Rights
Knowledge
Wisdom
Foundations
Eyes and ears
To be fueled by
Knowing and doing
What is good and
What is right and
What is kind

This anger is
An education
A teacher

This anger
Has shown me
How it feels to be
Silenced
Hated
Ridiculed
Sidelined

We must uphold
Ahimsa
Always
Ahimsa

Protect our
Children
Families
Neighbors
Beloved and Berated

We all have rights…you and me
We
All
Have
Rights

That is the beauty
That is the power
That is the way

To listen…
Converse
Converge
Dream
Act

Freedom

God Save the Queen
And all of her Children

God Save the King
And all of his Beloved

God Save the Earth
And all of her Inhabitants

Peace. Rest. Unity.

We shall not find peace in or through control
We shall not find love in or through demons
We shall not find light in the darkest of hours

Unless we climb to the top of the highest mountain
Carrying all in equal measure along with us
Without trust, devotion, caring
We shall fall further and further into the abyss of darkness, dregs, and danger

Walk slowly, my dear
Don’t get swallowed, my dear
Listen carefully, my dear
Your way is not the answer

Listen carefully, my dear
Hate and suffocation will not work

Evil may persist for a while, but
Dear, evil never triumphs in the end

Anger, I have found, is one path to enlightenment…
If you sit quietly and listen and allow
You will be amazed at what you can learn
When Anger comes around

What helps…
Resources for when you feel your world sliding, shifting, shattering

Astrology is one tool that is saving my life right now.

Astrology offers a bigger picture for what’s going on in my small kingdom right now (even especially when the loss of trees has me screaming mad), as it compares to our shared world and the cosmos at large.

Astrology helps me find myself, the natal-self that was born a Virgo Sun, Scorpio Rising, Taurus Moon, and the transiting-self living in a Universe with Mother Moon moving the inner and outer tides, Neptune and Saturn dancing together in Aries, and Uranus settling into Gemini for its new seven year shift.

When I work with these tools, I feel a settling, as a student landing in the deeper wisdom that all is well, all is as it should be in this moment and in all the moments that follow.

Astrology offers an acknowledgement that while I may be having a shit-storm of a day, we are all held by a force much bigger, more loving than we can fathom. Especially on the days when we’re pelted unceasingly by lemons.

Here are my two go-to resources for…

• Exploring

• Navigating

• Confirming what is felt in the body

• Claiming what’s next, what is desired

I am not an affiliate of either brand listed below, and everything stated above and below is strictly my opinion. I’m a customer and fan who works with their tools on the daily to figure out what the hell is going on in and around me.

Starelai

IG: starelai.app
www.starelaiastrology.com

Kathryn is a creative genius! My first entry into her world was with The Hero’s Story Birth Chart Biography, which - no joke - woke me up entirely to the cosmos in, around, and above me. This and her ChatGPTs are dream tools, and I will forever be grateful she made them! Genius!!!

Hero's Story Bio

Check out all of her offerings, I know at least one will suit you perfectly if you have an interest in learning more about your Soul’s Purpose here on Planet Earth!

Startek

An in-the-moment tracker. On my phone, at the ready. I’ve had my husband and daughter install it on their phones, too!

Startek

Closing thoughts…

The first time I passed out on Saturday night, I returned to my body being held in my husband’s arms. He was shaking me awake. I said, “I just fell asleep, I’m ok, I just fell asleep.” Then I conked out again, this time at the feet of my daughter, who said my head hit the wall. 🥺

While I was “away” the first time, all I could remember was being in a deep dream state. I had transformed into the main character in the book I was reading, placed right into the scene I had just finished reading earlier in the evening. I really believed I was Celaena and that the ridderak was coming for me. It was so real.

And it was so fascinating! I’d love to learn more about this fainting-dreamscape…how did that happen, why, what did it mean!?! I’ll bet has a perspective to share!!

Which leads me to ~ The Draw!

Dee and I host our monthly meeting next week, Tuesday, May 19th. We’d love for you to come explore the depths that lie dormant within, look, feed your inner Wolf, inquire about your current life and plans for summer!

Register Here! 💃🏼 $19

In case you’re wondering…
Here’s what I’m using to heal my arm!

Helichrysum & Copiaba

All that is contained within are bubbling thoughts, merging concepts, threads of creative consciousness at work. I hope you enjoy, find insights, tap into your own creativity, working with the tools below…
💖✨ xoxo M

The other night, as I thought about my decision to shift directions with work, it dawned on me…

Maybe it’s not about finding meaning or purpose.

Maybe I just want to create more beautiful things.

To write, paint, publish…to create.
That is the life’s work.

Yoga, tarot, psychology
are the tools for creating.

I take the tools with me each day. As I claim what’s next and act under the Guide of Surrender, these tools become my Seeker’s compass, my metaphysical barometer, my emotional thermometer. They allow me to navigate the map of this Earthly Kingdom where each adventure ultimately leads me to buried treasures that await anew each day…exploring, traversing, claiming a life filled with gems and jewels, the riches of meaning and purpose that appear once the daily call to adventure begins!

Can you claim this adventure, too?

Yes, of course!

In the Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell tells us:

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

Wow.

In other words, it is the

• acting

• claiming

• accepting the Call to Adventure

…that allows the seeker, the journeyer, the hero or heroine to find their purpose and meaning.

We could leave it right there and that would be enough.

But for fun, let’s look at a current example of answering the call, claiming the adventure, that leads to meaning and purpose…

Stranger Things

The children didn’t think twice, they knew they had to save Will. They claimed the quest as their own, they answered the call to adventure. Acting strictly on instinct and impulse, they jumped on their bikes and took off. Their action became experience. Their experience led them to the treasures of purpose and meaning.

This modern-day myth is the epitome, the perfect telling, of the Hero’s Journey.

When one seeks purpose or meaning,
in order to find it there must first be
an action, a claiming.

Not a thinking, mulling, wondering,
or day-dreaming.

A claiming.

The Energy of Meaning & Purpose

My most favorite, perfect creation is our daughter.

Her existence has brought an immeasurable amount of meaning and purpose to my life. But before she could exist, before her creation…there had to be an action, a claiming of the creation of a new life between us, her parents.

That energy of new life, the power that exists at the moment of claiming or conception, as yours, an idea, a project, something desired…the realization comes…a flash at the exact moment where claiming and action meet, that lightening snap moment of creation, so fast, bright, subtle…it cannot be seen by the human eyes, only experienced at the soul level, in the body.

Creation cannot exist without the hero first claiming…be it the book or business or baby, the painting, the running, the doing of the actual action that becomes the experience…which then results in the hero obtaining meaning and purpose, the ultimate goal of claiming.

In our experience, we resonate a certain energetic frequency, which I think is what Campbell is telling us is the “rapture of being alive.” That energetic frequency of accomplishment, love, bliss, the radiance we emit when we deeply feel we have found the treasure meant for us.

When was the last time you actually felt moved, inspired, energized by an action you choose to take?

The Role of Beauty

We are here to claim, to create, to experience something meaningful, something beautiful, in this beautiful world.

Beauty is another tool at the hero’s disposal, an ingredient to be sprinkled along the path, once the path has been claimed.

For without looking through the lens of beauty, the adventure is less colorful, and meaning and purpose become fleeting.

Taking time to enjoy, savor, create, gaze upon that which is beautiful allows our hearts to fill, allows us to look and intuit the next step on our journey.

The call to adventure is made more bearable when the tool, the sprinkling of beauty as an ingredient, is engaged.

The Ancient System that Shows Us the Way

If you think, plan, contemplate, meditate, or pray to find your way towards a life of meaning and purpose, it is useful, but not the most efficient or effective way to create, attract, or manifest what you desire.

Consider the 8-limbed system of yoga.

When you see yoga as a tool constructed to assist all seekers, heroes, journeyers who are interested in claiming what is meant for them, for answering their call…you’ll quickly pack it in your sack before leaping into action.

Self-Guided Workshop:
Working with yoga as a tool for adventuring

(1) GROUND. Center yourself in the framework of the first two limbs of yoga…10 embodiment ideals or practices that include:

• compassion for yourself and all beings

• truth, honesty, living with integrity (listening to the truths that live inside)

• envisioning and holding loosely ideas, wants, desires (the opposite of grasping or strangling things to death)

• balance, moderation, filling with the the expansive energy of creation

• releasing, letting go of control and expectation or the “how”

• purity, clarity of mind, body, spirit, and space

• contentment, at the heart and soul level, an energetic match with the Divine

• self-discipline, burning creative passion that allows transformation to occur

• self-study, introspection, access to intuition

• surrender, to the Higher Power that has your Highest Good in mind, always

(2) ACT. Claim through action, movement. Asana and Pranayama, movement of body, breath, and spirit are action.

Claiming is action.

Before you can sit in the space where you begin your hero’s journey…in the map of your inner consciousness, your mind’s eye…you move your body, you move your lungs, you move stagnant energy. You detach from anxiety, worry, fear, sadness.

Movement precedes a quiet, calm, steady mind. Movement allows you to become the channel for what you have claimed to materialize here on Earth…in you, through you.

(3) MEDITATE. Set free your senses. Steep your still and silent body in the expansive and abundant awareness that…what you have claimed has also claimed you.

When still and silent, you become the channel for that which you have claimed to manifest into existence…through energy, frequency, the beauty of engaging with the Divine…walking the paths set before you on your adventuring map.

Claim from a space of grounded freedom. Move your entire self along the adventurous path. Find the gold that is your purpose, your meaning.

1. Ground ✅ Surrender

2. Act ✅ Claim

3. Meditate ✅ Visualize

4. Bliss ✅ Realization of meaning and purpose —> “…the rapture of being alive.”

Subscribe now

Final thoughts…

So, you see, it’s not really about meaning or purpose.

And we’ve gone about it all wrong when we ponder, chase, and worry, when we attach to outcomes and try to control our footsteps each and every day.

We’ve gone about it all wrong when we fail to claim what it is we desire and then neglect to accept the call to adventure.

All joys and all the trials and tribulations of life come through creative action, through claiming, which gives rise to an intended action, and leads to a life lived with purpose and meaning.

I would love to know what Joseph Campbell thinks about the Hero’s Journey found in Stranger Things. Having been engaged by Stephen Spielberg to consult on this very “journey” for the story of Star Wars, I have no doubt he would have delighted in the call to adventure Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and El answered.

• What idea, adventure, experience is calling to you, tugging at your heart, your intuition…asking for you to claim it?!

• Have you been still and silent enough lately to listen for your next call?

Answering the Call to Adventure Through
(1) Dreaming &
(2) The Draw on Tuesday, May 19th (details below!)

Here’s the latest from Dee on working with dreams. Inside she offers us a four step framework for dream exploration.

And, honestly, if we listen, if we are aware of the patterns that arise in our dreaming life, perhaps we find symbols living there, pointing us to the Divine call to adventure, more tools to take with us on our Hero’s Journey! Enjoy!

Deidre Opp

When Nightmares Speak

I recently had the pleasure of listening to Charlie Morley speak at the London Practice Live event at the Wellcome Collection on the 28th of February, and it was truly spectacular…

Read more

6 months ago · 2 likes · Deidre Opp

You’re Invited!
~ The Draw ~

Part Studio. Part Sanctuary.

Access your magic with us!

Dee and I are hosting our next live gathering, in the Zoom Sanctuary…

Think…part body-mind-spirit connection mixed with tarot cards and creative journaling to find answers to your day-to-day inquiries!

If your heart feels curious or pulled in a meaningful way as you read this, we want you with us!

Register here 🌞 $19

The walk this morning was much needed after a month of severe allergies, so bad it required a visit to urgent care on Easter morning. The symptoms still linger, but moving and seeing may be the last two antidotes required for a full healing.

Awake, looking

This morning I was witness to…

• 10 bunnies hopping and munching

• One white egret & one great blue heron…both taking off from and landing in lakes, hunting for breakfast

• One sandhill crane soaring and calling

• Squirrels eating nuts and snacks left by strangers

• Pigeons perching watchfully

• One male cardinal sitting high up on a black lamppost, surveying the sky before darting off in flight

• Clouds that looked like brushstrokes or breath

• Various ducks and birds, quacking and singing

• Fish breaths, bubbling up into ripples on the surface of the water

• Crows collecting, connecting, communicating

“To see a crow with food in its beak is a sign of tremendous good fortune, an assurance of future economic prosperity.”

~ Judika Illes
The Big Book of Practical Spells
Everyday Magic That Works

mother crow
by Michelle Crider
Fear & Musings a Journey from Anxiety to Peace

Subscribe now

A conversation over found crystals

When I walk early in the week, I always stop first at the spot where the gem ladies set up their booth during the Sunday farmer’s market. They leave full geodes out on the street for children (or adults!) to purchase and smash.

Back story: When we lived nearby, my daughter and I would go to the same spot when the market closed to scour the street, sidewalk, and bordering mulch and grassy areas for geode fragments. We would find tiny pieces, perfect round pieces, huge chunks, or none at all.

Some mornings a kind stranger asks if they can help me find something I appear to have lost or they approach, curious why I’m searching the ground.

This morning an older woman who was walking her dog called out, “Hello!” almost as if we knew each other. She crossed the street and we started chatting about what I was doing.

I showed her my handful of geode pieces to which she exclaimed, “How incredible you’ve found such wonder in the ordinary morning of the day!”

She refused a piece when I offered, replying, “I wouldn’t know what to do with it!” To which I encouraged, “You would look at it! It’s beautiful!”

For your consideration

Walking for pleasure…

instead of exercise.

Yoga for expansion…

instead of exercise.

When walking or practicing yoga, exercise happens along the way, but walking and yoga offer a pathway to creativity, happiness, contentment, expansion, abundance…and how much sweeter each are when they work their magic on the body, mind, and the Soul!

Final thoughts…

Opening my eyes to see again, I take in all the goodness the world is offering at any given moment. And it can be the same for you.

Are your eyes open to see?

Usually I’m standing at this house (below) taking a picture of the house on the opposite side! Today something stopped me in the moment before capturing this image saying, “LOOK!” So I looked across the lake and gazed upon the other house I’d love to live in one day!

Keep this intention close…

“By looking with wakened eyes and a vision connected through my inner and outer worlds ~ from my heart’s center and mind’s eye, with the essence of my Spirit engaging with the physical realm…I imagine then materialize my dreams and desires…claiming them for my Earthly enjoyment!”

Until next week, and as always…

We walk this path together,
one breath at a time.

🌞 Michelle

P.S. Your presence is requested! Below…Find your invitation & link to register for ~ The Draw ~ on Wednesday, April 22nd @ 12pm EST (NYC) | 5pm GMT (London)!

The Draw ~ You’re Invited!

Part Studio. Part Sanctuary.
Find your magic with us!

Dee and I are hosting our next live gathering, through our Zoom Sanctuary…

Think…part body-mind-spirit connection mixed with tarot cards and creative journaling to find answers to your day-to-day inquiries!

If your heart feels curious or pulled in a meaningful way as you read this, we want you with us!

Register here 🌞 $19

Welcome, dear alchemist!

Have you noticed…

There are seasons where life feels unsteady.

It swings.

Too much…or not enough.

Too fast…or sloth-like slow.

And somewhere inside, you can feel it…the subtle exhaustion of living in extremes.

This week brings you an offering for something different.

No pushing.
No over-planning.
No judging or fixing.

Instead…

• surrendering

• balancing

• being

This is a gentle, grounding meditation rooted in the wisdom of Temperance, the sacred art of finding your balance, where all you are and all you do…are enough.

A space where you can soften, steady, and come back into rhythm with yourself.

Press play when you’re ready.

For this practice…

Find yourself…in a safe, quiet, and still environment for this 15 minute guided meditation.

You may like to have something to write with and on for some free-writing or journaling after this practice (prompts provided below!). You never know what will come up during and after you practice!

Journaling Prompts

• Where am I exhausting myself through extremes?

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We recently celebrated our daughter’s 13th birthday, and the big gift was a 4-day pass to Disney World! We’ve been in Florida for almost four years, but still had not taken her to the most magical of kingdoms!

Growing up in Florida, I had been to Disney many, many times in the 80s and 90s…and it was my absolute favorite place to be, so much so, that Orlando was where I wanted to live. I graduated high school and took off to UCF!! (And now, funny enough, I’m back with my own sweet family for round two!)

Back then we would ride all the rides we wanted to in a day, as many times as we wanted, stop in the shops along Main Street before leaving at night, exhausted and barely able to walk, and end up with t-shirts, ears, candy, stuffed animals…all the delights a day at Disney could offer. Magical times!

I have such light, airy, joyful feelings when I look back on the good old days, when hours of waiting and lightening passes didn’t exist. When the best ride in town was Space Mountain, and walking through Tomorrowland felt like being in the Jetsons!

Fast forward to 2026

What a dream! Going to Disney with your children! It’s really a mother’s dream, isn’t it?

To visit a magical place, together, where memories have left soul-level imprints…to etch new memories, shared together, jointly on our hearts…definitely a dream come true!

To the point of this article title though…

I hadn’t walked the pavement of Tomorrowland in over 25 years.

As magical as it was when I was little, and as much of a BLAST Space Mountain was (still)…and don’t even get me started on TRON (total blast we rode four times…front row each time!!)…

What hit me the next day was:

We now live in Tomorrowland, today…
right here, right now.

What once felt futuristic, now felt like the present.

Not new, or different, or boring, or bad…just like today, living in the tomorrow of yesterday. What once felt like the future now felt like the present.

It felt odd, this realization.

I haven’t asked my daughter what she thought specifically of Tomorrowland, now that I think about it.

…If she thought it felt like walking through the future.

My guess is she would not think it was futuristic at all, especially since her dream car is a Tesla, and now Tesla’s can even drive themselves!

She’s already living in tomorrow, and one day she and I both will be the ancestors of tomorrow.

But for today, for now…I will enjoy the present, with all of our modern-day luxuries, comforts, and delights…including our very own self-driving beauty…her dream car and my experience of living in the tomorrow-land of yesterday, with her, today!

Closing thoughts…

I haven’t forgotten about the promised Guided Meditation for March, inspired by the Temperance card. With birthday celebrations, that Magic Kingdom visit, and spring break now here, I've gotten a bit sidetracked.

I look forward to bringing that to you next week, and then we head into April!

I’d love to know how you feel about the future…

If you ever look around and wonder, what’s next…where do we go from here?!

And I mean this in the most positive of ways…

How do we make the glittering, shining delights our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will look at and marvel upon in the Tomorrowland of tomorrow?!

What beautiful things will you create today that will fuel and inspire the generations that follow you on this wondrous, magical, beautiful planet we get to call home?!

💖 Michelle

P.S. Wishing you many blessings for a magical Spring Equinox and joy-filled, ease-full days ahead as Mercury stations direct! ✨

Patterns

I should have been a ballerina. As a Virgo, nothing thrills me more than the idea of standing upright, strong, and aligned at the bar moving through tendus everyday. Realistically, this dream fades farther and farther away the older I become. In 2019 I had set a goal to dance in pointe shoes by age 50. That age has passed, and while this dream may still come to fruition in some way…only time and a restructuring of daily routines will allow it to manifest. (also read: restructuring of daily ‘patterns!’).

Luckily, I can watch my daughter perform her most striking, strong, beautiful ballet and revel in that. She can use her movements and her words to show and tell me how it feels, and I can experience it through my eyes and heart. And it looks as glorious as I know it must feel.

That said, let’s begin our pattern recognition study right here - with ballet - and move swiftly through several others.

The pattern of ballet is very technical, as it must be…for the sake of beauty and safety of the body.

The pattern of yoga moves through sequences of body and mind and breath.

• Of body. Body strengthening. Body softening.

• Of mind. Mind focusing. Mind letting go.

• Of breath. Breath in. Breath out.

The pattern of meditation (yes, also yoga) and prayer are of mind and Spirit. Moving focus from the external to the internal, external…internal. Listening and asking and surrendering. Again and again.

The pattern of tarot speaks to us in symbol. Symbols ancient as time and ingrained in our unconscious through the collective, encouraging us to find our greatness, our path, our purpose…through repeated seeing and sensing…looking and learning…adventuring and resting. Beginnings and endings…birthing and dying…over and over again.

The pattern of astrology connects us to the cosmos, both waayyyy ooouutttut theeerrrreee and to the cosmos right here, inside our own star-made bodies. Ebbs and flows of the tide guided by the Moon. Centering and grounding with the Earth. Acting and expanding…awakening and transforming…Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Pluto…along with all other celestial bodies, uniting to support, encourage, assist, and inspire ourselves as Earth-bound celestial Beings.

The pattern of thought and idea shifts between a mind of confidence and forward movement to a mind of fear and being stuck in the past. From visions of abundance, freedom, and prosperity to bothersome, worrisome, pestering thoughts of lack, restriction, and failure.

The pattern of nature brings us sunshine in the summer and snow in the winter. Flowers and sweet babies of all types in spring, and falling, faded leaves and the desire for rest in autumn.

Note for Awareness & Observation
Many of these patterns, naturally and at their extremes, hold the continuum of opposites…the yin and yang pattern of life. Without these patterns of opposites, poles, positives and negatives…we could not exist. For without the ability to reproduce, through the Masculine and Feminine…without the Sun and the Moon…the Light and the Dark…the rainy and dry seasons…all life would cease to BE.

A Pattern of Threshold

At a New Year…pattern in the forms of standards and traditions, rituals and celebrations.

• December 31st/January 1st…gives us our standard, routine calendar year

• Lunar…a beautiful new Chinese tradition I’m still learning, offering us at this moment in time…the Year of the Horse [Fire]

• Astrological…another magical tradition I’m studying deeply…affecting our outer and inner worlds…cosmically, spiritually, materially…completely

• Seasons & Cycles…brought to us by Mother Nature and Father Time…gifting us this beautiful world to explore and experience

• Individual, Personal Birthdays…when we are blessed, we continue to collect these threshold moments…year after year after year…

Personal Inquiry

If you’re reading this, you’ve experienced many New Year’s…

Imagine yourself standing at the literal threshold of a New Year. Perhaps you picture yourself standing at a line with one foot about to cross it, or you’re at the edge of a cliff, or on the beach staring at the horizon.

December 31st, 11:59:59…at this moment you have new hopes and dreams, reasons for change and expansion, and the resolve to do, be, attract more over the next 365 days.

January 1st, 12:00:00…all the possibilities that exist in your mind, the world, the Universe now belong to you.

Breathe…

How are your New Year’s Resolutions, those new habits, routines…patterns…unfolding, expanding, allowing you to create the life you desire, as you’ve now crossed the threshold from the second to the third month of the New Year?

Balance

Observing the symbols, the story in the image before us…What do you see?

Let’s explore…the pouring of water between vessels.

• Flow

• Peace

• Integration

• Self-regulation

• Harmony between extremes

• Balance…Balance…Balance…

Standing in the water…

• Clarity

• Cleansing

• Centering

• Awakening

• Balance through clarity, cleansing, centering, and awakening, again and again…

Brahmacharya

A yogic yama, or ethical guide, brahmacharya presents us with an opportunity to seek and incorporate moderation, balance in our daily life.

Diving deeply into the cosmic center of Self…

What can I do today to place myself into balance with my true, material, Earthly Self and my radiant, effervescent, Divine Self?

What needs clarifying, cleansing, in order to life a life in flow, balanced, and whole?

Exploration Prompts

How do I define threshold?
What thresholds do I interact with, cross each day, month, every year? How do I anticipate and act upon these thresholds, whether they be physical or invisible?

How do I define alignment?
What areas do I notice in my life right now that are either aligned or misaligned with who I feel I am now or who I am becoming?

How do I define myself?
Defining myself…As “……….” or “……….” can make a significant difference in how I see and approach the world, how I breathe, act, speak, interact…face joys or difficult situations.

Example:
I define myself as a successful writer. OR I define myself as a tired, lazy bum. I may be saying both to myself at the same time…a disruptive, unbalanced, misaligned pattern of mind and belief…

Which definition ends up driving the ship?

Closing thoughts…

Going back to the pattern of tarot, with Temperance is our card of the month…I present you with two questions:

Tarot…Why does it matter? What makes it meaningful?

Here’s my short answer:

Coming up later this month…a yoga nidra focused on Temperance, with a bit of our annual theme, the abundance and leaving of a legacy of the X of Pentacles. I hope you’ll join me in this practice!

🕊️ Seeking spiritual guidance?
🩰 Looking for those patterns or some much needed life balance?
❓ Have an inquiry tugging at your heart?

Let me coach you through guided meditation and the cards to find your way forward!

Begin the booking process here!

Tell me what you need!

See you soon!

🩷⛲️🦋🩷⛲️🦋🩷⛲️🦋
Michelle

Want more on patterns? Here’s 2 more articles for your adventuring, awakening Spirit!

Returning to the Vessel

Bring one hand to your heart.

Notice the gentle rhythm beneath your palm.

For a few breaths, simply feel the steady beat of your own life.

Over the past month, you have explored the image of the vessel…the chalice of the Ace of Cups.

A symbol of creativity, nourishment, emotional abundance.

Next, imagine that chalice resting quietly within your chest.

Strong.
Steady.
Ready.

Imagine a soft, warm light glowing inside this inner chalice.

This light carries everything February has offered you.

Moments of rest.
Moments of clarity.
Moments of creativity.
Moments of tenderness.

Allow the chalice to fill slowly with this light.

No rushing.
No forcing.

Simply noticing what has already been given.

Even if the month felt busy or imperfect, trust that something meaningful has still taken root.

Growth is often quiet.
Subtle.
Unseen.

Let the vessel continue to fill.

Journal Prompts

Read more

We are more than dust to dust.

When I see a deer, a horse, a turtle, a fish, a squirrel, a crow, a cardinal, the sun, the moon, I see more than the physical being.

I see the energy that animates it as well.

All living things breathe, have an energetic current running though, animating them. And we do, too.

Light. Spirit. Energy. Frequency.

What stirs inside when you hear the phrase…dust to dust?

Does it feel heavy, off, or not quite complete…not exactly, completely right in terms of the end of our beautiful, meaningful, extraordinary lives?

And what about the beginning? Who was I…Who were you…

Dust to dust feels so insignificant. I just can’t believe that’s all there is to it, to life or death.

God didn’t send us here to be insignificant, to lead insignificant lives.

If you think about energy for a minute, about our Holy Spirit…

While our physical bodies might indeed be of dust and return to dust one day…our ethereal and eternal Spirit doesn’t fall into the same category.

Surely our Spirit is far more majestic and expansive than dust or ash.

Yes, anything physical can be turned to dust. Just throw it in the pit and strike a match…poof… Dust. Ash.

But what about the Spirit…the thing that cannot be seen, only felt? The thing that breathes life into, animates. Like an energy current that runs through the walls in our homes or that turns on the lights in our cars.

Let’s look a little deeper at…

old, original statements of “dust”

“…for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
Genesis 3:19

“…earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Book of Common Prayer, burial service

That’s fine…ashes to ashes, dust to dust…it provides an answer to our physical body. But I think we need something more…

These Biblical statements, though they come from books dating back years and years, they do not allow for the full experience of our human life, for our existence in this very human body, as a physical being and a spiritual being. Our beings that are both concrete and energetic in form.

For all the ways we are encouraged to contemplate on and with the Holy Spirit, we must think of ourselves as Spirit, too. Which this common phrase, dust to dust, does not take into account.

Wouldn’t it help us a great deal to acknowledge that, separate from our physical body (the dust part)…

The Spirit part of us, cannot become “dust” once we move on from earth?

Yes?! Good!

Here I’ve fixed the common phrase to be more fitting to our physical and spiritual life experience…a phrase that can answer what was in the beginning and what is at the end of our significant, creative, meaningful, abundant lives…

It is because of that divine spark at our conception that was pure, boundless, and infinite energy, and the eternalness of our Soul before and after our life on earth…that we were, before the beginning, LIGHT…and we will be LIGHT again, in the end, after our bodies return to dust.

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Closing thoughts…

As a mother, it serves me well to think of each of us as Light instead of dust. It is uplifting, positive, and offers hope as my daughter finds her own way in the world (and I find my way in a world that will, down the road, not revolve entirely around her 🥺😭).

We can choose to accept the fear and the doom the human world likes to feed us (the dust), or we can choose to listen more deeply to the subtle message in the dust, and instead, hear it as a call for hope, love, kindness, and Light.

Our physical world and bodies are not eternal, but our Spirits are. We, as energy, as Spirit, existed long before our physical bodies came to take form on Earth..and that thought gives me great peace and hope for what is to come…on Earth and in Heaven.

Because, honestly, I can’t imagine infinity without my family. And by holding the faith that we are energy, we are Light…I know we will all always exist together.

✨ If you feel called to go deeper into the introspective, creative, transformative work that YOUR LIGHT is calling for, that wisdom buried deep within your bones…this is for you! ✨

Last fall, my dear friend Dee and I led a beautiful workshop blending yoga, tarot, journaling, breath, and meditation — a spacious container devoted to creativity, clarity, and nervous-system nourishment.

The experience was incredibly meaningful, and we have been quietly preparing a similar offer…but this one takes place monthly!

Think…yoga class mixed with tarot cards and creative journaling to find answers to your daily-to-day inquiries!

If your heart feels curious or excited reading this, we would love for you to join us!

Our first class meets on Zoom this Tuesday, February 24th at 9am ET (NYC-time) / 2pm (London-time).

Register here ✨ $19

* This article is a slightly edited version of an article I published on March 13, 2025.

Since we revisit the essence of this teaching every Ash Wednesday, these words are timeless and in need of consideration this year as we begin, again, the season of Lent.

Hello! Welcome to your Yoga Nidra for February!

This is a deeply restful, guided meditation designed to calm the nervous system and help you rest alongside your purpose for this year, within your inner vessel.

Here, you don’t need to…

• figure out anything

• make decisions

• be productive

You simply find a silent, still, safe, calm place at home, lie down, listen, and allow.

Inspired by February’s tarot card, the Ace of Cups, and our 2026 guide, the Ten of Pentacles, this practice invites you to become a steady, worthy vessel for creativity, nourishment, and lasting abundance.

Afterward, you are invited to journal with the prompts below and notice what begins to unfold.

Theme: The Cup That Overflows
✨ “I am a worthy vessel for divine creativity, nourishment, and lasting abundance.”

This practice takes you through…

Prepping for stillness

Intention setting

Body scan and breath awareness

Imagine that with each inhale, you are drawing abundance into your body. Feel it filling the lungs, expanding into every cell.

With each exhale, you release anything that does not resonate as abundance — you release lack, fear, energetic misalignment.

Journeying into your overflowing vessel through five layers (koshas) and seven energy centers (chakras) of pure consciousness, where your potential is divine and abundant.

Experiencing divine creativity, nourishment, and lasting abundance through visualizations…golden chalice filled with light, white dove descending, water overflowing into a still lake…

Resting and restoring in three minutes of silence, encouraging deep connection to the divine creativity and abundance that resides within you.

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Your cup overflows.
You are cleansed and clear.
You are fed and full.

The waters around you teem with life, ideas, and possibility.

You are a vessel of creation.

You are safe.
You are held.
You are delighted by the world placed
gently in your hands.

Last week we…

• explored the Ace of Cups and considered the significance of living a life filled with creativity and abundance

• were introduced to the self-guided workshop on filling ourself, our creative vessel

• considered the nature of creativity through the vessel of mother

You loved last week’s self-guided workshop, found the gold in the practice, but you also had the desire to dive-in even deeper, so...

This week offers you a practice where I guide you through Filling the Vessel…so you can simply listen, breathe, be aware, and be moved into the core of your creative vessel.

Want to revisit last week’s article? You can do that here!

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Invite yourself into the center of your vessel…

Find yourself in a comfortable, cozy, reclined or resting position…in a safe, quiet, and still environment for this 13.33 (!!!) minute guided meditation practice.

You may like to have something to write with and on for this practice.

Journaling Prompts

• What did you notice in your body?

• What word or feeling stayed with you?

• Why and when might you return to this practice this month?

Prompt from the Guided Practice

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✨ February arrives with the Ace of Cups…

Inviting us into divine creativity ~ not as something we strive for but a gift, idea, sensation or emotion that fills our mind, body and Spirit, moving in and through us…as we embody the vessel of our being…when we share our outpouring of gifts, ideas, sensations and emotions with the world. ⛲️

From Direction to Divine Creativity

January welcomed us and invited us to move into alignment with our divine nature.

Through the Two of Wands, we stood at the threshold of a New Year, surveyed the landscape, and chose a direction. We clarified what mattered. We oriented ourselves toward possibility.

Now, February calls us into something older, deeper, and supremely feminine.

If January was about standing at the threshold and choosing our direction, February asks us to see and step inside our own chalices of creation…not only to feel but to fill, to hold and to act.

This is a shift from will to womb, from effort to embodiment, from deciding direction to devoting ourselves to what wants to be formed in us and from us.

This is the moment we allow divine creation to fill the vessel of our human form so we can overflow, with abundance, all we are and all we are becoming to those around us with whom we feel attracted to and aligned.

February’s Guide:
The Ace of Cups

Tarot works not because it predicts, but because it gives the psyche something symbolic to remember, to rest inside.

February is guided by the Ace of Cups…
a card of water, feeling, feminine energy, divine creativity…abundance and blessings.

The Ace of Cups offers an image of peace and safety, a feeling of flow, a delivery of abundance and blessings.

The vessel, or chalice, is a container for feeling, sensing, creating.

The psyche relaxes when it feels held, cleansed, nourished.

When we feel held, nourished, and at peace, our nervous system softens, settles, surrenders to the guidance we are meant to receive.

The Chalice, the Mother, the Creator

Before creativity was a product or practice,
before Creator was a profession,
it was a body.

A womb.
A chalice.
A vessel to hold life.

Being a mother is the greatest gift, the most magical and joyful role I will ever embody.

To have held our daughter in the vessel of my body as she formed, developed, grew, and then became is the ultimate act of Creation.

To follow her creation with any other work of art is a bold re-quest. But a request that continues to call from deep inside my bones, from the well of waters flowing from the divine chalice of my creativity.

Divine Creativity as a Feeling State

My spirit breathes life into my mind, my heart.
My mind generates an idea, an intuitive spark.
My body accepts the sensation, the feeling the idea offers…and then creates.

Creation does not come from force.
Creation comes from holding gently.
Creation is divine.

Mothers know this. When we try to force our children (our creations), they resist, reject, or run.

When we try to force our nervous system, the stem of our creativity, it fights, flees, or freezes.

The Mother does not force creation.
She allows it.
She holds it.
She nourishes it.
She trusts in divine timing.

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Self-Guided Workshop:
Filling Your Vessel

Allow yourself to be a comfortable, cozy, inspired vessel placed in a safe, quiet, and still environment.

Be sure to have something to write with and on for this practice.

This is a practice of opening, allowing.
This is a practice of feeling, sensing, being.

Find & Fill the Body, the Vessel

• Place one hand on your heart, one on your belly

• Gently follow the breath…in…out…

• No judging or fixing

• Just slow, mindful breathing

• Allow the mind to wander then return, wander and return

• Center your mind at the core of your body, your vessel…this may be your heart, your solar plexus, your third eye, somewhere else

• Feel your vessel filling with light, peace, joy, love…

• Allow your vessel to overflow with the abundance of these gifts

When you feel ready, mindfully…

Engage with Your Creativity

For a moment, scroll up and feel how the image of the Ace of Cups fills your mind.

Allow your vision to become blurred, entranced, enlightened by what you see in the image of the card.

When you are ready, ask…

What caught my eye?

What became aware to me as I gazed into the image?

Revisit the image once more. Explore the symbols and how they merge with your life in this present moment…

• The chalice as sacred container. What is being stored in the vessel of my mind or body that is ready to be released?

• The dove descending, spirit becoming matter. What do I need to become free, to accept the abundance, gifts, and blessings the Universe is holding for me?

• The bread. Nourishment, sustenance, sacrifice, daily miracle. What self care rituals are sustaining me? What rituals need to be released (unhealthy habits)? What rituals need to be created, added?

• The mother as the original vessel of creation. What is it I am prepared to give birth to now, this year?

A Creation Practice

• Visualize a chalice

• Draw, paint, or collage your chalice

• Write five words that describe how you want to feel this year…perhaps you write them flowing out of the chalice you’ve created

Journaling Prompts

Read each question slowly, with the intent to listen first, write second. These questions are for cultivating listening, looking, seeking rather than problem-solving.

• What brings me clarity?

• How will each of the five feelings I intend to embody this year fill me with the knowledge, wisdom, and faith to move forward, in small and big ways, each day this year?

• What wants to be created through me right now — gently, slowly, honestly?

Ancient Wisdom
Yoga teaches us…

Peace arises not from force, but from right relationship with breath, body, emotion, and meaning.

Peace arises from a vessel filled with compassion, truth, clarity, contentment, surrender…ahimsa, satya, saucha, santosha, Isvara Pranidhana.

Closing thoughts…

February is not asking you to do more, produce more, or be more.

It is asking you to trust what moves through you
when you feel safe enough to hold it.

Sit with the questions.
Return to the practice.

Let this month be one of creative incubation, so you know what you want to do next in this beautiful, blissful vessel that is your life.

UP NEXT!!

Later this month, I’ll be sharing a full Yoga Nidra (guided meditation) inspired by the Ace of Cups and our year-long guide, the Ten of Pentacles. This will be a practice devoted to divine creativity, nourishment, and becoming a vessel for what longs to be born of you and through you.

We’ll also close the month with an Overflow Blessing Meditation…gentle guidance for carrying forward your desires and creations into the months ahead.

Until next week…may your chalice be filled with an abundance of blessings that overflow into all areas of your life!

🩷 Michelle

Miss the 2026 tarot card pull or need a refresh of what’s to come this year?! Watch here…

Disclaimer & Waiver

Click the button below to view the disclaimer and waiver in full, which directs you to ensure you practice within the means of your own personal safety and the safety of others.

By pressing play and listening to this yoga nidra audio you agree to listen inside your home or in an environment that supports your total and complete safety as you lay down to listen, and you agree to the following disclaimer and waiver:

Disclaimer & Waiver

Here’s something fun and different…an idea still unfolding!

This is a practice that is abundantly meaningful, joyfully magical, and enjoyably doable for the days you want to feel intuitive, thoughtful, brave, bold. For the days when you want to find the beautiful, inspirational, extraordinary…

This practice is perfect if…

• you’re done with the world’s surprises

• you’re tired of rushing, fixing, overthinking

• you feel pulled towards the spiritual and want it to feel alive within you

• you want to find meaning in each day, even when most are ordinary

• you crave gentle structure and soulful guidance

Subscribe now

Self-Guided Workshop:
“What IS on your bingo card?”

A practice for awakening awareness and calling in what you actually want, for all the ordinary and extraordinary days.

Here’s your guide for a simple and powerful BINGO framework to help you…

• develop your awareness

• reconnect with your intuition

• balance your nervous system

• find inspiration, trust, and grace

• feel the quiet magic always available to you

Instructions

Choose your word for each letter.

Watch for ways those words show up in each day, each week.

Make a tally mark under each letter when you see or find something that falls under each letter.

Make a note, doodle, or a collage to represent your sightings, awarenesses, joys, gifts.

Viola! A new way of manifesting…working with your senses, your body, your mind, spirit…

Cultivating the good while
calling in the things you love and desire!

The Framework: B.I.N.G.O.

B for Beauty. Bold. Brave. Becoming.

On the sample card above, you’ll see I choose beautiful. I want to see butterflies, night moths, the moon, flowers, incredible art…

You might be searching for ways to become more bold, brave, or enhance your becoming this year.

I for Inspiration. Intuition. Inner Voice.

I’m ready to find what inspires me…deep, full, quiet breaths in meditation, poetry, quotes, rainbows, cloud colors and formations, masterful artistry, teachers.

You may want to hone your intuition or tune your inner ear to hear that little voice inside when it is whispering to you.

N for Nature. Nervous System. Nourishment.

I’m craving nature…outside walks in the sunshine and its ray’s warming my face, sweet critter sightings, sunrises and sunsets, bodies of water.

Perhaps it’s time for a nervous system re-balancing or to write a new and nourishing self-care plan, complete with healthy recipes and space to just be inside each day.

G for God. Grace. Guidance. Gratitude.

Now is the time for all of this. All. Of. This.

I’m calling on God, Jesus, Mary…the Angels and Saints…Ancestors and Spirit Guides…to help me on this journey.

And what about for you?! Maybe the little glimmers of gratitude sprinkled in each day, or the guiding light shining before you.

O for Openness. Opportunity. Ordinary. Oracle.

Openness, for me, means finding ways to expand, be available, to reach higher ground, swim in the ocean, a wonderful surprise behind each opening door.

Maybe you’re looking for new or different opportunities this year. Write them down, even the small, simple, subtle nudges that lead you to something more!

The ordinary can actually be the delight in daily rhythm…a great stretch, warm coffee, the laughter of a child, the scent of a rose. Ordinary becomes extraordinary when you take the time to look and love!

Oracle can be the synchronicities you observe, the ones meant only for you…a phone call from the friend you were just thinking of, a delicately delivered message from a dragonfly, an image or symbol seen that matches your favorite artwork or tarot card.

Pause for this Reminder

This is not about controlling outcomes or feeling judgement, neglect, or lack.

• This is about choosing what you practice noticing, inviting in, and nourishing.

• This is a practice, not a checklist.

• You’re choosing qualities, sensations, experiences, and ways of being.

• Invite curiosity, not perfection.

Closing thoughts…

I hope you are inspired to create your own bingo card and chart your way to beauty, boldness, inspiration, nature, gratitude, and an openness to all the desires you are holding in your heart!

What do you think of the hand-made bingo card? I’ve been so frustrated with all-the-tech and all-the-subscriptions required to do the most basic things, I decided to go back to the old-fashioned way of making things! So I made it by hand instead of spending hours trying to make it on Canva! Maybe it’s not perfect…but then again, perfection is on the don’t list, isn’t it!?!

Make Your Own Bingo Card & Share

I can’t wait to see your bingo creations! Post them in the comments so we can connect with and inspire each other, and revel in all the bingo WINS!

Feel free to email me if you’d like a PDF of the handmade bingo card template!

Here’s to this week’s BINGO wins!

🤗 Michelle

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While researching for this article, I learned something sweet and comforting:
butterflies and moths transform differently.

A butterfly transforms inside a chrysalis.
A moth transforms inside a cocoon, woven from silk.

Two different vessels.
Same sacred outcome.

And that outcome matters more than we realize when we reach a certain season of life.

Who am I?

I’m in the thick of it now.

Some days my peri-menopausal mind is so full of thought it feels overwhelming.
Other days it’s eerily quiet…blank, even.

And when I contemplate life from this in-between place, the same questions keep rising:

• Who am I?

• What am I doing?

• What do I want to be doing?

• Where do I want to go next?

• How do I get to where I really want to be?

Sometimes these questions emerge from forgetfulness…
Why did I walk into this room?

Other times, they arrive as future-forecasting…
What is the life I really want to be living?

Either way, the overarching theme is the same:

identity.

The Outer Hand → The Inner Call

For most of our lives, we’ve been guided by an outer hand.

We chose careers because we were told we should.
We made decisions based on responsibility, security, survival.
We earned to support ourselves, our families, our futures.

And that made sense, until it didn’t.

Because somewhere along the way, wisdom arrives.
So does stillness.
So does silence.

And with them comes a quieter, but far more powerful guide, a voice.

An inner call that gently (or not so gently) wants to push the outer hand away.

We begin to sense that it’s not just a change we need…

It’s a new identity.

Mid-Life Crisis…
or Mid-Life Chrysalis?

What if what we call a “mid-life crisis” is actually something else entirely?

What if it’s the most honest, human question that is finally demanding our attention from somewhere deep within:

Who am I…now?

And at the midpoint of life, we don’t need to panic, or shrink, or hide, or explode.

We need a chrysalis.
Or a finely-woven, silk cocoon.

A protected space, a vessel, to dissolve what no longer fits, or serves, or feels right…

So we can emerge as who and what we were always meant to be.

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Self-Guided Workshop:
Identity Visioning

We don’t have just one identity.
We have many.

But which one is rooted in truth?
In integrity?
In purpose?

If you like, try this:

Sit in stillness.
Eyes closed.
Breath soft.

Let yourself enter a dreamlike, contemplative state.

Then ask, without forcing or judging any of the answers:

• Who do I see when I look at myself?

• Where am I?

• What am I doing?

• What am I wearing?

• How do I hold myself when I’m sitting, standing, alone, in public?

• What environments have I chosen to surround myself with, when it’s just me, when I’m at home, when I’m out in the world?

Notice what feels alive.
Notice what feels true.

That vision, that version of you, may not be ready to fly yet.

But it is ready to be found, witnessed, honored, and guided into becoming.

Your sacred vessel of transformation at mid-life is waiting…

Will you choose to reverently enter?

A Guided Meditation

Find yourself in a comfortable, cozy, reclined and resting position…in a safe, quiet, and still environment for this 12 minute guided meditation.

You may like to have something to write with and on for this practice.

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